Poems by Jean Portante
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Of what does or doesn't come to pass the shadow is
it seems to me the least experienced ghost. Not that between the two the double witness like someone deciding to incline one ear or freeze his breath would remember what had happened. I'm not sure that that anything did happen when snow not usually given to ascension rose again despite the obstacle of clouds. Rose again to where one might ask. Or what's snow doing when instead of falling it rises. Or why wouldn't another ghost well up from what does or doesn't come to pass and slide down there into winter and here into words. And why would this ghost slide into words here. Translated by Zoë Skoulding from the French From : What does or doesn’t come to pass Surprised by day not breaking any more the moon and the sun like two old underground thieves relit the torch and set off. I'm sure that anyone who'd seen their feeble gleam from a distance would have felt sorry for them. What is certain in all of this is that night fell. And that a night that falls is a thing that howls. And that when something howls the underground thieves use the torch. The torch that weakly lights the belly of things and makes the elements sneeze. O howling of elements that sneeze. O fire that escapes from the belly of things. And you old thieves do you know now to whom you can address your underground apologies. Translated by Zoë Skoulding from the French From : What does or doesn’t come to pass |
Jean Portante was born in Differdange (Luxembourg) in 1950. He is of italian origin. He lives in Paris. He has written over forty books – novels, plays, essays, translations and poetry –, and has been widely translated. Including in English Point/Erasing, translated by Anne Marie Glasheen (Daedalus, 2003), In reality, translated by Zoë Skoulding, (Seren, 2014). He translated into French poets like Juan Gelman, Jerome Rothenberg, Pierre Joris, John Deane, Gonzalo Rojas, Edoardo Sanguineti, Valerio Magrelli, Durs Grünbein, etc.
In 2003 his book L’Etrange langue was awarded the Mallarmé Prize in France, and the same year Portante won, in France, the Grand Prix d’Automne de la Société des Gens de Lettres, for his complete works. As a novelist, Jean Portante published, among others, Mrs Haroy ou la mémoire de la baleine, (1993) translated into many languages and, in 2015, L’Architecture des temps instables. For both novels he got the Servais award of the best book of the year. He is also the author of a biography about Allen Ginsberg: Allen Ginsberg. L'autre Amérique (Le Castor Astral, 1999). Since 2006, Jean Portante is member of the Académie Mallarmé, based in Paris. In 2008, he founded, in France, with the French poet Jacques Darras, the poetry magazine Inuits dans la jungle. In Luxembourg he is at the head of the literary magazine Transkrit dedicated to translation. In 2011 he was given in Luxembourg the National Literature Award for his complete works. In 2014 was published Le travail de la baleine, an anthology of his poems written between 1983 and 2013. His novels L’architecture des temps instables and La tristesse cosmique went out in 2015 and 2017 at Editions PHI. |
